eady aim, pulled the trigger. There was the usual faint click
of the hammer, and immediately a little spurt of brown dust close to the
lion's fore paws showed that the Russian had missed. The lion took no
notice whatever of the fact that a bullet had just missed him, but
crouched again for the emission of another roar, when the click of the
hammer again sounded, immediately followed by the loud thud of the
bullet, and the roar ended in a savage snarl as the great beast lurched
forward on to his head, and with a single convulsive extension of his
body lay quiet and still. At the same instant the thud of another
bullet was heard, and the lioness was seen to twitch her head slightly,
but without making any further movement. As for the troop of gazelle,
no sooner was the lion down than, throwing up their heads with one
accord, they wheeled sharply round to the left and dashed off across the
little plain, vanishing a minute later through a cleft of the rocks.

Meanwhile Mildmay was looking alternately at the lioness and his rifle
with a puzzled expression.

"I could have sworn that I hit the brute," he exclaimed, "yet there she
lies as coolly and comfortably as though nothing had happened. Even the
tragic end of her lord and master seems to have no interest for her!
But I'll wake you up, my beauty, or I'll know the reason why." And he
raised the rifle again to his shoulder.

"No need to waste another cartridge, skipper," remarked Lethbridge, who
had been inspecting the lioness through his binoculars. "Take these
glasses, and look at her head, just behind the left ear."

Mildmay took the glasses, and, having used them for a moment, handed
them back with a grunt of satisfaction.

"Thanks," he said. "I felt certain I had hit her; but I couldn't
understand why she never moved."

"She _did_ move, my boy," answered Lethbridge; "she twitched her head
when your bullet struck her, but she had no time for more, for you
killed her on the spot, just as she lay. An uncommonly neat shot I call
it--for a sailor."

Mildmay laughed.

"Yes," he said, "it's not half bad--for a sailor, as you say, Colonel.
We sailors don't claim to be crack rifle-shots, you know; we leave that
for the soldiers. But when it comes to shooting with a nine-point-two,
or a twelve-inch gun, I believe there are some of us who could show the
red-coats a trick or two."

These two--Mildmay and Lethbridge--had not wholly escaped the feeling of
profess